Category Archives: MODERN HISTORY

The birth of a male heir to James II of England made possible a permanent Catholic dynasty. Several Protestants echoed Mary and Anne’s doubts that the baby had been smuggled into the bedchamber in the warming pan in front of over forty witnesses — not all of whom were ‘papists’. In order to prevent a Catholic succession, seven Protestant nobles invited William, Prince of Orange to invade the country. Mary backed her husband against her father.

The Mormons have been described as the most systematic, organised, disciplined and successful pioneers in American history. For over 20 years they were one of the main forces driving the settlement of the America West. The Mormons were remarkable also in migrating as a whole community, unlike the individualists and opportunists who made up the majority of the settlers of the West.

What happened to Napoleon Bonaparte‘s relatives after he lost power in France? They could not stay in France but, perhaps surprisingly, they came to little harm – with the exception of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim-Napoléon Murat. Murat fled to Corsica after Napoleon’s fall. Hewas executed in Naples sin 1815. Famously, his last words were: “Soldiers! Do your duty! Straight to the heart but spare the face. Fire!”

The situation facing the forces of liberalism and nationalism in Italy in 1830 was apparently more hopeless than that facing the same forces in Germany. The German Confederation, however inadequate as a form of national expression, did at least provide a common meeting place for the delegates of the princes; in Italy there was no such confederation, but all the states were totally independent of each other.

The union of Holland and Belgium under the Dutch king, William I, in 1815 had been one of the less successful parts of the Vienna settlement. The economic and strategic motives which had seemed to justify the union proved less potent than the religious and cultural sentiments which were offended by it. William I had shown a sympathy for Belgium’s economic needs, but neither he nor his officials could understand the claims of Belgian Catholics nor the enthusiasm of Belgian liberals. That short-lived movement, the liberal Catholicism associated with Lamennais in France, had encouraged a temporary union of liberals and Catholics in Belgium, and the 1830 revolution in Paris infected the citizens of Brussels with its spirit.